From the Archive: Mono Brown (CAROUSEL 21)

Staff/ August 28, 2020/ Poem

MONO BROWN

Creak

Make my bed and lie in it, bone-pile,
you get to be the blanket lumps.

Half a year or so ago your weight
would make this mattress creak, creak.

Stay a bit and let me hear your teeth
tap dance, bone-pile. Knead an everlasting
meal from these pale sheets of flesh.

My bathroom light stays on when you come
back to me in dreams that hold your joints
together for the first time since they broke
and I see you walk upright, bone-pile.

Sleep now, your bones surround me. Elbows
and kneecaps and hips that cut till I cry out
you pull me closer into your rib cage.

Mono Brown has an English degrees from the University of Waterloo (BA, Rhetoric and Professional Writing), the University of British Columbia (MA) and a PhD in English from UBC. Mono has been an instructor at English at Langara since 2015, and before that worked in the English department at UBC. They also serve on the programming committee for the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and in their spare time enjoy reading, biking and gardening.

Creak
appeared in CAROUSEL 21 (2007) — buy it here

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